


flash point

by treescape



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, But this does have an ending that can be read as hopeful, Carbonite, Heavy Angst, I'm Really Serious About the Angst, M/M, Suitless Darth Vader, Vaderwan, Whump, mind tricks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:55:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27917119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treescape/pseuds/treescape
Summary: It isn’t the first time, but he thinks it is; he could never forget this sick curl of exhaustion in his limbs. The truth is that he will forget again, just as he has forgotten before.Or: After capturing Obi-Wan on Mustafar, Vader does the only thing he can think of to keep his former Master close: he freezes Obi-Wan in carbonite. Every so often, he can’t resist the temptation of seeing Obi-Wan again and brings him out.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Darth Vader
Comments: 51
Kudos: 431
Collections: favourite fics from a galaxy far far away





	flash point

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tessiete](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tessiete/gifts), [JSwander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JSwander/gifts).



> This began from a conversation with tess and jo on discord about what would happen if, post-Order 66, Vader captured and froze Obi-Wan in carbonite because it’s the only way to keep him close--but sometimes, when he can’t bear it any longer, he lets Obi-Wan out. Obi-Wan has to continually piece together what’s happened.
> 
> I've been working on this for some time; I was originally hoping to finish it for whumptober, since it fills...a lot of the prompts. That didn’t happen, but here we are.

It isn’t the first time, but he thinks it is; he could never forget this sick curl of exhaustion in his limbs. The truth is that he will forget again, just as he has forgotten before.

His eyes don’t seem to be working, but somehow the room still spins. He struggles to his hands and knees anyway. Something lurches deep in his gut, and he retches nothing. It makes his throat burn like a desert in drought, but if he’s in the desert it must be night. He shakes so violently he thinks he might shatter, bones hammered down to a thin film of ice. He has no idea where he is or how he’s gotten here, but something tells him that this might be worse than Kadavo, worse than Zigoola, worse than Jabiim.

There’s only one thing he’s really, truly sure of, and even that turns out to be a question more than an answer.

“Anakin?”

The silence stretches for so long that he might almost begin to wonder if he could somehow be wrong. That’s more disorienting than the nausea or the blindness or the cold, because he should know that presence _anywhere_ , even oddly muted as it is.

The voice, when it speaks, becomes the first strand on the loom of his own soul. It will weave him back together again, but in the end, he’ll almost wish it hadn’t.

“I’m here.” It is undeniably Anakin, but the cadence is _wrong_ , too flat and lifeless. Whatever has happened to bring Obi-Wan here, something has happened to Anakin, too. Obi-Wan fears it is something much worse.

“What have they done to you?” He doesn’t know if he can bear knowing, not when Anakin’s voice sounds as it does, but he doesn’t have a choice. He cannot gauge how to make it better if he doesn’t _know_.

Silence again, like free fall in the darkness, and then: “Nothing has been done that can be fixed.”

He wants to believe that it cannot be true. Somewhere deep in his bones, there is a need to assure Anakin that anything can be mended.

But some lies are too blatant to voice, so instead he says, “Tell me while I regain my bearings, and then we will find a way out of here.” His own voice sounds weak in his ears, thin and cracked, but he thinks it counts for something that the words come out intelligibly at all.

“There is no way out. I’ve tried.”

Obi-Wan shakes his head, and the darkness spins less than he had expected it to. The hard floor feels something close to solid beneath him as he manages to straighten just a little, hands braced shakily on his thighs. Soon, he thinks. Soon he will have gathered the strength and the wits to get Anakin away from here. “We’ll try again,” he says. “We’ll try together.”

Anakin makes a noise in the dark, one of negation and despair, and Obi-Wan has to do something to distract them both. He says the first thing that comes to mind.

“I can’t see you.” He can pinpoint Anakin, somewhere just a few feet away in whatever cell or dungeon they’re in, but he would give a great deal to see Anakin’s face. It might help him to sort up from down, if he could read those eyes and the set of that mouth. Anakin has never been good at wearing a mask.

“It’s dark,” Anakin tells him, and Obi-Wan frowns, because he knows that isn’t it. He can see slivers of light, now, barely more than shadows, enough to know that the problem isn’t the room.

“No, it’s—”

“Here,” Anakin’s lifeless voice says quickly, before Obi-Wan can even think what else he might have been about to say. He senses movement, and then an arm wraps low around his waist, settling in against the small of his back. Anakin’s fingers curl very suddenly into his hair, and then Anakin’s chest is firm against his cheek, heart beating steadily beneath unfamiliar robes. “Here,” Anakin says again, and it isn’t Obi-Wan’s imagination that his voice seems a little less barren.

Surrounded by warmth, the memories come back in pieces, but that’s all Obi-Wan needs. He’s been trained to weave the merest fragments together. He sees a familiar face above a blur of orange and white, and feels the blast of betrayal. He sees the flash of a saber, the pain of it undulled by its holographic haze, and bodies too small to be endured. He sees the collapse of hope on a planet of hatred and fire. He sees Anakin’s face, and hears the _hiss_ of carb—

He isn’t quick enough. His defenses go slamming up, but it’s far too late, because Anakin is already _inside_.

Anakin has always been inside. Obi-Wan has never thought to have to defend against him.

“It’s too late,” Anakin whispers. “I have to put you back.”

“Anakin, what have you _done_?”

There is no answer, but he doesn’t need one, not from Anakin. The answer is there in the memories creeping back to life. It’s there in the coldness that lingers in his bones.

“No,” he says into the silence of despair, and marvels at the calm in his voice. Inside there is what he can only call chaos, but he fights through to a kernel of stillness. “You don’t have to do anything, Anakin. You can—you can do anything you want. I’ll help you.”

“It’s too _late_ , Master.”

“It’s never too late,” he says, with all of the firmness that belief can hold. “Not if we’re together.”

But it _is_ too late, at least this time. Anakin is pulling away, and Obi-Wan’s words fall on closed ears. The last thing he truly registers is the press of Anakin’s hand to his before it tears away.

He’s not sure, exactly, if that final, desperate grip of fingers is Anakin’s or his own.

\---

Obi-Wan wakes to the feel of familiar arms around him. It is the first thing he registers, there amidst the curious patchwork of sensations.

Through the odd blurriness of his thoughts, he tries to take stock. There is darkness, and fatigue, and a chill that borders on fever. Somehow, that feels familiar too, although it doesn’t make sense. He remembers, as if through a fog, that he’s never been prone to illness.

But that is neither here nor there, at least right now. In this moment, he will focus on the present rather than things that have never been so in the past.

Right now, the most important thing is that there is also heat, if only where his body meets Anakin’s. They’re a tangle of limbs that Obi-Wan can’t quite sort out, but it doesn’t really matter. He can hear the steady beat of Anakin’s heart beneath one ear, and feel Anakin’s fingers gentle in his hair.

He tries to speak, and it comes out resembling something like Anakin’s name.

“Shhh,” Anakin says, and Obi-Wan can feel the warmth of that sound against his temple. “It’s okay.”

The words ring of deflection, the way one speaks when truth is too terrible to voice. Obi-Wan’s disbelief must be apparent—in his thoughts, or the pace of his breathing, or the haphazard tension of his limbs—because Anakin speaks again, reluctant, into the dark.

“You’re sick.”

It is not a lie, exactly. Obi-Wan can _feel_ the sickness. It’s layered beneath skin and muscle and bone.

Still, there is something more. Obi-Wan tries to project reassurance, a promise that Anakin doesn’t need to protect him. “How?”

“That’s not important right now,” Anakin says firmly. Obi-Wan has a flash, almost like vertigo; he has heard that tone a hundred times and more, when Anakin was afraid Ahsoka would argue and had no real answer to return. He wonders how much Anakin expects _him_ to argue, to use that tone with him now.

“Anakin.”

A thumb sweeps against his scalp, a shivery awareness so different from the cold flush of fever. Obi-Wan would lean into it, if he could, but Anakin is holding him so tightly that it isn’t necessary. “A virus,” Anakin says slowly, finally, his voice steady and sure. “Spread by the Separatists.”

That explains the sluggishness of his thoughts, and the lassitude of his limbs, and the coldness in his bones, though that last is being chased away by the press of Anakin’s body and the perpetual stroke of his fingers.

“Blue Shadow?” he asks hoarsely, plucking the name out of—somewhere. He’s not sure where, except—

Ah, yes. He plucks it out of Naboo, or perhaps Iego, or—

He makes himself go back. There’s something about Naboo that he thinks he should remember, something too important to overlook. It will come, he is sure, if he gives Anakin’s presence the time to chase the daze from his thoughts as well.

A hesitation, as if Anakin still isn’t sure how much he should reveal right now. When he speaks, his tone is careful, measured, in a way that strangely reminds Obi-Wan of the cadence of his own voice. “We must not have destroyed it all.” There is the faintest hint of guilt in the air, but before Obi-Wan can find the words to tell Anakin that it isn’t his fault, he speaks again. “You don’t need to worry about it. We’ve taken care of it. I gave you the antidote.”

Of course he’s taken care of it. If there is anyone Obi-wan trusts in a crisis, it is Anakin. Even when Obi-Wan has failed him by falling ill, he has carried on. “Good,” he manages to say. “Good, Anakin.” There is a flare of pleasure at the words, desperate and hot enough to make Obi-Wan ache, but layered beneath it is worry. Obi-Wan can almost taste it, stringent and sharp. “I’ll be fine, Anakin. You needn’t worry about me so much.”

The words take so much energy to shape that Obi-Wan almost isn’t sure he’s managed it. He’s so tired. Somehow, he knows he’s been tired for a long time, a span of ages the virus can’t account for. Whatever has caused it, he has to get well again—or at least, well enough to help Anakin deal with the aftermath.

It is not fair for Obi-Wan to leave him alone.

Perhaps if he rests for just a moment more, he will find the strength to focus inward, to speed the antidote in purging the sickness out. He thinks, in passing, of asking for tea—anything to help chase the last of the lingering chill away—but he doesn’t want to lose the stability of Anakin’s grip.

He’s so tired.

“Go to sleep, Obi-Wan,” Anakin whispers. There’s something in his voice as it catches on Obi-Wan’s name—some terrible longing that Obi-Wan cannot quite grasp. “I’ve got you.”

\---

The fragments come into focus, cradled violently in his mind. They are shards of glass that draw something worse than blood. He doesn’t reach for them, not consciously. He wakes already reaching.

Figures, like a maelstrom in his mind. Cody aims. Children flicker. Padme falls.

Anakin.

Obi-Wan doesn’t know how he’s managed to hold on. Some part of him almost wishes he hadn’t, even though he’s tried again and again and again. It is a success, even if it doesn’t seem so in this moment.

He forms the words as soon as he is capable of it, except that cannot be true. He will never be capable of it.

They come all the same.

“Anakin, what have you— _what have you_ done?”

A sudden anger so bright he can almost see by it, even through the temporary carbon blindness. Bile rises, acerbic, in the back of Obi-Wan’s throat. He cannot sort out what has stirred it—the nausea creeping through his veins, or Anakin’s fury braided so tightly around him, or the thought of—

Force. _Force_.

“I have done nothing that you didn’t drive me to.” Anakin’s voice twists in on itself, nothing to fuel it but its own hatred and rage. “You _failed_ me, Obi-Wan.”

There is pain beyond pain, a loss so vast he cannot see either side of it. Obi-Wan is in the midst of it, except that’s nothing but a figure of speech. He does not know that there can be a middle when there’s no beginning or end, or a centre when one’s soul has been scored to shreds.

The pain will have to suffice, for now; it is all there is to build himself around. Later, he will find something else.

Right now, he will use what he has.

“Are you going to _fight_ me, Obi-Wan? Now, when you can’t even stand?” It is the incredulity in Anakin’s voice that makes Obi-Wan realize he is struggling to rise, to coordinate limbs still numb and perplexed. He doesn’t know what he means to accomplish. He cannot sense his saber; for all he knows, it has burned in the fires of Mustafar. It doesn’t really matter, he supposes. He doesn’t think he could convince his fingers to properly grip the hilt, anyway. As for the Force—

He can’t focus, yet, and there’s no _time_. Any moment, Anakin could put him back. Any second, the ice could shatter forth.

“You _can’t win_ ,” Anakin says, his voice somehow cold with the frenzy in those words. “I’ll kill you, or I’ll put you back.”

But they both know it won’t be the first.

 _No_. He cannot go back. To go back is destitution. Worse than the cold or the nausea or the dark is the void of forgetfulness.

“I won’t let you do this.”

“You don’t call the shots, _Master_. Not here. Not anymore.”

There are hands around his biceps, hauling him the rest of the way up, and Obi-Wan tries to recoil, but it’s useless. He’s too weak; he cannot even unbalance that grip enough to fall back to his knees.

He has to hold on, for next time. He has to hold on, but—calmer. More carefully. He will use these last few seconds to plan. Above all, he will hold—

\---

“Who—who is there?” His own voice is so muddled and raw he doesn’t recognize it as his own.

He recognizes the other voice, though, even if he doesn’t know from where. All he knows is that it’s _important_.

“This was a mistake,” the voice says, and before he can even begin to unravel the fact that he has bearings to gather—

\---

Time has too little meaning and too much, all at once. There is only _before he knows_ and _after_ , but _no_. That isn’t true, because those blur together, too. There are too many befores, and too many afters, except that isn’t true either.

There are too many befores, and not enough afters. Nothing quite lines up. He is left jagged, and uneven, and mismatched.

The pieces come together slowly. Obi-Wan isn’t sure if it’s easier that way, or if it only delays the inevitable.

He doesn’t know when Anakin figures it out. It might have been before Obi-Wan could see his face. It might have been after. Obi-Wan had kept up the pretense as long as he could, but right now, Anakin knows.

“Why?” Obi-Wan asks, the words muffled against the shoulder of Anakin’s robes. Bone and muscle shift, but not enough to dislodge the press of Obi-Wan’s cheek. He doesn’t know what he means—why has Anakin turned to the dark, or why has Anakin done the things he’s done, or why is Obi-Wan still _here_. He doesn’t know why he asks.

He knows the answers to each.

Perhaps Anakin chooses the question that is easiest to answer. Obi-Wan doesn’t know if he will ever be certain.

Anakin’s voice blazes like the sun, possessive and desperate at once. “You’re all I have left.”

“I don’t have to be,” he whispers. “The light is there still.”

He can feel Anakin shake his head above him. “It’s not. There’s just you.” Fingers brush against the back of his neck, back and forth, just beneath the collar of his robes. He doesn’t want it to stop. So long as they keep moving, hope is easier to grasp. “You’ve been out too long,” Anakin says, but those fingers keep moving. Obi-Wan stares into the dark weave of Anakin’s robes and feels.

“You could let me stay.”

A pause, and then movement again, a thumb brushing up under the shell of his ear. “You’ll never accept what I am now.”

“Neither will you. It’s why you keep bringing me out.”

A press, sharp and painful, but still movement. “I can’t.”

“Anakin—”

Fingers spread and shift upwards, cradling the back of his skull, and stop. “It’s time to go back in.”

He wants to close his eyes against what is coming, but darkness will return soon enough. “No. Anakin, don’t. _Anakin_.”

Anakin begins to pull away, and Obi-Wan doesn’t have the time to _stop_ , to breathe, to do anything to control the panic suddenly bubbling up through his veins and into his voice.

He only has time to say one thing, and so he says the truest thing he’s ever known. “How can it be too long when we belong together, Anakin?”

Anakin hesitates.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading. I'm [treescape](https://treescape.tumblr.com/) on tumblr if you ever want to come say hi or leave a prompt!


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